Nursery News:Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.

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A pile of freshly ground mulch, but what’s in it?

My friend and longtime customer Caroline Moriuchi invited me for a guided tour of her family’s mulch production operation, M&M Mulch in Moorestown, NJ. I jumped at the chance because I always wondered how mulch was made. What I learned from my trip plus subsequent research is that if you don’t know what your mulch is made from, you should.

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As you can see in this photo, M&M Mulch accepts only wood chips and brush for grinding into their high quality mulch.

M&M Mulch, which is run by Caroline’s son Seiji with the help of his father and brother, has a company policy of using only wood chips from tree services and brush from landscapers for grinding into mulch. They will not use wooden pallets, scrap lumber, or parts of demolished buildings to produce mulch, although this is common practice in their business. For this reason, they do not produce red-dyed mulch because it can only be made from processed lumber like pallets. I am going to show you the Moriuchi’s mulching operation, but first I want to outline some of the dangers from pallets.

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Mulch being ground at M&M Mulch

You should do your own research, but, after reading many articles, I would never use commercially produced mulch without knowing what it was made of. The best article on the subject is in Natural Life Magazine, to read it click here.

Basically, a lot of mulch is made from recycled shipping pallets. If you drive down Interstate 95, you can see the huge pile of pallets waiting to be ground into mulch near Wilmington, DE. A high percentage of pallets are contaminated with bacteria, including e coli and listeria, from the food transported on them and from improper storage. They are often made from “engineered wood” which is treated with formaldehyde.

The pallets themselves are often treated with dangerous chemicals, although this is being phased out. If they come in from abroad, they are fumigated with toxic fungicides and pesticides, and toxic substances often spill on pallets during transportation. Wood scraps and demolished buildings pose similar dangers from toxic applications like lead paint and pressure treated wood.

Now we get to the fun part, how mulch is made:

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The mulch production process starts with this very big machine, the grinder.

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The grinder is moved around the production yard using this remote control.

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A front end loader is a crucial piece of equipment.

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The loader scoops up the wood chips and brush from the giant piles waiting to be ground.

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The raw material is deposited into a hopper on the grinder.

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Conveyor belts inside the grinder feed the grinding teeth.

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The grinder produces a giant pile of mulch, but the process isn’t over because most consumers demand that their mulch be dyed. I am not sure how this process started or why dark black mulch is considered more attractive than natural brown. I personally think black-dyed mulch is hideous.

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The dyeing machine

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These paddles mix the ground wood with carbon black to make it black or iron oxide to make it brown. M&M does not produce red-dyed mulch because it can only be made from pallets.

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Black-dyed mulch emerges from the dyeing machine.

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Black-dyed mulch on the right, brown-dyed on the left.

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Brown-dyed mulch on the right, un-dyed mulch in front and on the left. I think gardeners should question why they need dyed mulch.

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Thanks so much to the Moriuchis, especially Seiji who answered all my questions, for the fascinating tour. If you live near Moorestown, New Jersey, you are very lucky to have a safe source of mulch nearby produced by the fourth generation family farmers at M&M Mulch, 400 Hartford Rd, 856-234-2394. They deliver free to the Moorestown area and for a fee to other parts of New Jersey. Who knows maybe they can be enticed to cross the river to Pennsylvania!

Carolyn

Nursery Happenings: The 2014 Miniature Hosta Availability for mail order and pick up at the nursery is here. Your final chance to shop at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens will be during our open hours on Friday, June 13, and Saturday, June 14, from 10 am to 2 pm. We close on June 15 and reopen around September 15. You can sign up to receive notification emails by sending your full name and phone number to carolynsshadegardens@verizon.net.

Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and miniature hostas and only within the US.

If you are within visiting distance and would like to receive catalogues and information about customer events, please send your full name and phone number to carolynsshadegardens@verizon.net. Subscribing to my blog does not sign you up to receive this information.

Facebook: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens has a Facebook Page where I post single photos, garden tips, and other information that doesn’t fit into a blog post. You can look at my Facebook page here or click the Like button on my right sidebar here.

Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.

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Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, PA, U.S., zone 6b/7a. If you are interested in shopping here, send me an email with your full name, location, and cell number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Current catalogues are under Pages below. The only plants we ship are snowdrops to US customers.

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